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When Brian was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2010, his friend Alison offered to write letters to cheer him up. Over the next two years, as Brian’s cancer moved from stage III to IV, Alison’s letters kept on coming.

The letters became part of Brian’s recovery process, while Alison discovered a passion for writing she never knew existed.

Brian is now cancer-free, Alison is a writer, and the two have a relationship that only the term ‘best friends’ can describe. Alison and Brian are now dedicated to getting us all writing letters through their charity, https://www.frommetoyouletters.co.uk/about

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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What happens when ordinary people are faced with extraordinary choices?

In her second blistering novel set on the Channel Island of Jersey, Beyond Summerland, author Jenny Le Coat turns her attentions to the often overlooked issue of what happened after Liberation Day...

Jean Parris was a child when her adored father was taken away by the Nazis. As she and her mother wait anxiously for news, the life Jean thought she knew begins to fall apart.

Hazel Le Tourneur has never conformed to the island’s idea of perfect womanhood. But is she the worst kind of collaborator – an informer?

In the summer of 1945, the Liberation of Jersey has unleashed a different kind of war: one of suspicion, accusation and revenge. For among the heroism and sacrifice, there has also been betrayal and corruption. And while the beautiful island is permanently scarred by gun towers and bunkers, its people must learn to live with a different kind of wound – the desire for truth.

Jenny Lecoat is a novelist and screenwriter. Her debut novel The Girl From the Channel Islands was a New York Times bestseller.

In the 1980s she was one of the first female stand-ups on the UK Alternative Comedy circuit, before going on to write for magazines and newspapers, and later for television.

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.

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This July marks the 136th anniversary of the matchwomens strike at Bryant & May match factory in London's East End in 1888.

Exposing the truth of the ‘poor waif matchgirl’ historian Louise Raw fills us in on the true story of the vibrant working class women who downed tools, went on strike and changed the course of history.

Her work on the Bryant and May Matchwomen altered the way the modern trade union movement was understood. "It was actually begun by young women and girls, regarded by their supposed betters as the 'lowest of the low'," Louise explains in this episode, "but who changed the world for working women, using sisterhood and long hatpins!"

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.